Spider-Geddon #0 Review

“WAAAH! Can we put the brakes on variant Spider-People for two seconds?”

Insomniac’s Spider-Man is now Spider-Cannon! What role does he have to play in the upcoming Spider-Geddon? Will the Superior Spider-Man help or hinder his attempts to stop The Tarantula? Plus, could the Web-Warriors be unknowingly assisting the Inheritors?

“NEW PLAYERS”

WRITER: Christos Gage

ARTIST: Clayton Crain

“CHECK IN”

WRITER: Jed MacKay

ARTIST: Javier Garron

COLOR ARTIST: Israel Silva

LETTERER: VC’s Travis Lanham

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Isabel Hsu, Eric Monacelli, & Bill Rosemann

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kathleen Wisneski

EDITOR: Nick Lowe

SPIDER-MAN created by STAN LEE & STEVE DITKO

STORY: “New Players” starts off with Insomniac’s Spider-Man, the Spidey of Earth-1048, encountering The Tarantula for the first time. Their confrontation is interrupted by the Superior Spider-Man of Earth-616, Otto Octavius, sporting his second classic Superior look, not his Superior Octopus one. In typical Marvel fashion, confusion leads to the two Spider-Men clashing and Tarantula getting away. The two Spideys talk, with Otto revealing his identity, which helps Peter to be recruited by this variation of his former mentor and friend. Before Peter can assist Otto across the Spider-Verse, they team up to take down Tarantula. Once that is taken care of, Peter says his goodbyes to Miles and MJ and swings with Otto into a portal to meet their destiny, with Peter coining the phrase, “Spider-Geddon”!

“Check In” dials the clock back to seven months ago as Pavitr Prabhakar, Spider-Man: India, and Hobie Brown, your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Punk, send a Spider-Bot to the dimension where the Inheritors are imprisoned to keep tabs on them. Time marches on, with Pavitr continuing to send new bots over, with further assistance from Spider-Woman May Parker and later Billy Braddock, Spider-UK. The Inheritors are more withered with each inspection, but they have also been stockpiling the bots, to be used presumably in aiding their escape so they can feed and exact revenge.

THOUGHTS: It wasn’t until sometime after I read the issue that I realized that it was SPock looming over Insomniac Spidey on the cover, not some Spider-Man version of the high school yearbook photo double image. With his chest fading into the background, I had missed some of those details that would distinguish the two all the times I viewed this image on my phone. Personally, I had pre-ordered the Mark Bagley Midtown Comics variant, which puts the spotlight solely on the PS4 Spider-Man in his advanced suit. I’ve always been a sucker for Mark Bagley since the 90’s, so I couldn’t miss the chance to acquire his spin on this now iconic suit (come at me, Berryman)! Love it or hate it, that suit has been EVERYWHERE in the lead-up to the game over the last year and both the standard and Bagley variant cover do a great job of showcasing it in all its glory.

Diving in to the main story, the aptly titled “New Players”, writer Christos Gage immediately drops you into the world of Insomniac’s PS4 Spider-Man by utilizing several key elements of the game’s world. Right off the bat, the reader is hit with an episode of  the “Just The Facts” podcast by J. Jonah Jameson, Spidey gets an incoming call from MJ on his mask’s built in phone, and we get the latest gadgets on display, namely electric webbing and the web bomb. This firmly plants us in the Earth that’s been designated 1048.

What follows is a pretty by the numbers story that passes for the Marvel version of Super-Hero Meet Cute-Bad Guy does bad thing, Good Guy shows up, other Good Guy shows up, misunderstanding ensues, Good Guys fight, Bad Guy escapes, Good Guys hug it out and team-up to take down actual Bad Guy. What makes this stand out, at least for me, is that we’re incorporating a non-comics version of Spidey into the comics universe. Just like Spider-Verse 1 reined in Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the Electric Company, and the Raimi and Webb versions, we can now add Insomniac’s to our comic book head cannon.

Overall, I liked this design for what would be the Insomniac version of Tarantula. He feels cut from the same cloth as the other villains we’ve seen on that Earth and still retains elements from his original design, like color scheme, the mustache, and his stingers, even if those have been moved from his feet to his arms. He looks a match for the Infinity War suit with its iron arms in the game! Please make that DLC battle happen, Insomniac!

Gage captures everyone’s voices pretty well, making it easy to distinguish between the two Spider-Men. In fact, it’s pretty hard NOT to hear the game’s cast in my head as I read their dialogue. As for Otto, his speech is so over the top and arch that it feels clunky to me, but this is pretty consistent for him as a character, so I give Gage a pass on that.

The time line for this happens to be pretty convoluted and ungainly. As I haven’t kept up with all things Octopus, I was surprised by the Superior Spidey suit as I thought that version was “dead”, brought back in a new body with a new, grey suit. For those who haven’t read ahead, Spider-Geddon #2 explains that Otto went to this Peter in his Spidey suit because as he puts it, “this war is one of spiders, is it not?” Otto is looking for Spiders who are willing to kill the Inheritors, or can possibly be convinced to when the time comes. His monitors have apparently found this Peter for him and when they meet he gets a little insight into their relationship. I thought it was malevolently clever of Otto to pull on this Peter’s heartstrings and take advantage of his affections for his old mentor.

There’s a bit of an ominous subtext to Otto wanting to see his 1048 self. He even leaves one of his Spider-Bots behind outside the Raft. Is this to break his other self out or could it be he saw himself deteriorating health wise just like he did during Ends of The Earth and he wants to put this Otto out of his misery? Maybe it’s a step further and he wants to make this Otto like him and give him a Superior body? I’ve got to wonder how much Marvel would be willing to mess with this Insomniac continuity. At the end of the day, Insomniac was given licence to play in the Spidey sandbox with all of Marvel’s toys and as much as it feels like it’s THEIR Spider-Man, it’s really not.

This thought further lead me down a dark rabbit hole concerning Peter’s good-byes to Miles and MJ. There was a small touch of finality to it. Peter is very pragmatic, leaving Miles behind to take care of things if he doesn’t make it back, while at the same time noting he is in no way ready to join them in trying to tackle the Inheritors. I didn’t get an exact sense of when this takes place post the game-be it a week later or after The Heist DLC, but one doesn’t get the impression that Miles is exactly ready to jump into Peter’s shoes, even with MJ fulfilling the role of “woman in the chair”. Given how the game ends and how Insomniac really tries to go for the emotional connections with their characters, I can’t see them killing Peter off just yet, but I never thought Marvel’d end the marriage, so…

On the con side of things, my biggest dislike with this story was Otto making Peter seem like he was inexperienced. As we’ve heard several times thru the game’s marketing, this Peter has been the Web-Slinger for over eight years now, meaning he’s no novice. If you’ve played the game, you get a tremendous sense of his skill and past accomplishments. One could argue that Ock surpasses Spidey in terms of his specific field, but the idea that Superior could beat Tarantula, but Insomniac could’ve gotten people killed if he was flying solo is asinine. I won’t debate that Otto is a tech master and may have even more sophisticated gear than Peter, but I think Peter would’ve done just fine on his own, as witnessed by his first confrontation with Tarantula before Otto interrupted. It felt like it was just emphasized to shoe horn in Peter’s devotion to this new Otto when really their relationship in the game and the fact that he’s still wearing the Otto designed suit is enough.

The back-up story, “Check In”, had some decent art, but with some clunky transitions. With all the dimension hopping, the first time I read through I thought that maybe we were seeing alternate versions of Spider-Man: India (or a different Spidey altogether) when it was just showing the passage of time through hair growth. Garron’s second check in with the Inheritors also didn’t reflect enough of a change and furthered my confusion. I finally got it the third time when the Inheritors looked far more withered. The problem with this quick vignette is how abruptly it ended, without even a “the end” at its conclusion. I turned the page and was greeted by a two page splash, depicting a scene from the next issue. I felt like I was missing a page somewhere, but nope, the story was over.

All in all, this was an entertaining read. I enjoyed that our newest Spidey coined this event’s moniker and wish the backup would’ve given us just a titch more in explaining how the Inheritors used the bots to aid their escape. For fans of the game, you’ll enjoy how rooted this issue feels in its world, but you may be disappointed if you wanted to see more of MJ and Miles. Outside of featuring some returning Spiders briefly, the backup doesn’t quite reveal enough, making me feel that its pages would’ve been better utilized spending more time on Earth-1048, which is probably why you picked up this issue to begin with anyway. Given that this story really takes place in-between panels of the second issue, it might have been better served as #2.1 than a #0 that is supposed to serve as a prequel proper. Regardless, the art is great and it serves as a fitting welcome to Insomniac’s Spidey. Here’s hoping he survives the event!

MY GRADE: B

JAVI’S HUH?: After Otto unmasks and has a resemblance to Peter, does Peter think the Peter of Earth-616 looks like his Otto Octavius?